


An t-Sultain

by FaerieChild



Category: Outlander & Related Fandoms, Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: #all good things, #autumn, #community, #cooking, #harvest, #kinship, #preserves, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-21
Updated: 2018-09-21
Packaged: 2019-07-15 05:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 916
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16056326
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FaerieChild/pseuds/FaerieChild
Summary: Lallybroch's kitchen is a busy place in September as the harvest comes in.





	An t-Sultain

**Author's Note:**

> I appear to have wrote a thing. It happened by accident. Inspired by the time of year and the knowledge that for generations people have been making the most of this time of year to get through the winter to come.

Jenny Fraser Murray knew that not every mother would consider herself blessed to have more daughters than sons, but Jenny had learned long ago to count your blessing where you could find them and at times like these the number of women in the closeknit kinship community around Lallybroch was all too precious. It was with the many skilled hands of the women living here that Jenny hoped to get them all through the long winter to come.

 

September was a boon month, to be sure. The apples were ready to fall, the haws and rosehips and crab apples were turning red in the hedgerows down the glen. In earlier months they had collected the elderflowers and later the elderberries. The hazelnuts as well. The potter had been busy making jars for storage and day after day Janet organised her daughters as well as any of the surrounding female tenants as were able to spend their days away from their looms or knitting needles to gather the wild berries and fruits and then, in the large kitchen of Lallybroch they set about making every conceivable preserve in their ken. Apples were baked into pies and desserts. They were stewed and strained and boiled into jelly. Crab apple jelly to go with pork. Haw jelly to go with cheese. Chutneys and jams, pickles and preserves. In such times, Janet Fraser often found her mind going to her brother in England, wishing he could be here to join in the seasonal work and high spirits of a good harvest and thinking too of his late wife, and her curious words of wisdom before their final parting some years before. Grow potatoes. Eat plenty of fruit and greens. It put a new meaning on the old habits she remembered her mother practicing in years gone by, foraging for wild birds eggs and mushrooms and fruits from the hedgerows. A small child clinging to her mother’s skirts peering at edible herbs and how to tell the good berries from the bad ones.

 

Outside Janet’s husband and sons were gathering the harvest. Once the grains were in they would start on the root vegetables and then the potatoes. As much as possible would go into storage. A portion, too, would go towards alcohol to sell on the black market – whisky and also gin flavoured with the wild juniper and the sloes that grew in the hedgerows.

 

Travellers had turned up, some of the ancient families who had been travelling Scotland for centuries happy to join in the work for a day’s wages or payment in kind. Trades for other goods they had picked up along their way or skills they could offer. The relationship between travelling folk and settled folk was sometimes uneasy, but they brought news and songs and welcome labour, for Janet knew the work of preparing for winter would never be done without their assistance in taking in the harvest.

 

Laid out in the kitchen like this, the whole of Lallybroch set to making the most of the glut, it looked like a lot of food right now. Janet knew all too well how quickly that would change, how difficult it was to get through the lean months between winter and easter. The question of whether to fatten folks up now or try and make the food stretch a little further in case spring was too long. Pantries were cleared out, the journeyman cooper turned up and barrels of apples and grains began to stack up in storage. On top of it all, there was still the daily work to be done. The cows to be milked, the milk to be set aside, the curds and whey separated and the dairy work to be done. Butter churned, buttermilk taken into the kitchen for baking, cheese left to set. Bannocks and scones and breads made and then when that was done there were animals to be slaughtered. Long sides of meat hanging to let the blood drain before it was butchered and cooked, or preserved in brine or dried or cured or made into mincemeat and sausages. Skins sold for leather work and wool kept aside for dying and spinning and knitting through the long winter nights. Some of the local tenants had taken to weaving looms as a way to try and bring in some money in the harder years when self sufficiency was not quite enough, and that was without soldiers coming to raid the larder.

 

But Janet wouldn’t allow herself to think about that just yet. She took a key she kept on her person and went to the most sacred part of the kitchen, the specially locked away spices that would flavour the fruit preserves for the winter. And as she turned the key and opened the chest the aroma of cinnamon and allspice and cloves filled the air, so strong they might have been salts to keep her awake. The last few years had been hard and Jenny was under no illusions that there were many hard years to come but for now she thanked her mother’s good sense and long hours of walking and foraging that gave her the knowledge of how to make the most of the resources around them for as long as they could.

 

For now at least, though times were hard, there was a spirit about Lallybroch. There was food again, and life about the place and the joy and relief of that rarest of things – a successful harvest.


End file.
